Meet Hemant Kanoria, the only man who made profit out of his loans to Kingfisher Airlines

You would not have heard the name of Hemant Kanoria too often in life, but this chairman of SREI Infrastructure Finance can boast of having taken several smart business decisions that have benefited him, including making money off loans to Kingfisher Airlines or exiting timely from Viom Networks, with profits in his hand.

Now, he is all set to sell a stake in Sahaj e-Village, while wanting Alibaba owner Jack Ma as his partner. "They are in China. They know about the population In India. They would get such an opportunity on a platter," Kanoria told ET in an interview. On the other hand, he added that he is yet to approach anyone from the Alibaba team.

He, however, didn’t shy away from comparing the Chinese ecommerce giant with Sahaj, where rural e-kiosks provide services like micro-insurance, education and utility bill payments.

"It is run by village entrepreneurs. They are partners with us. They develop and run the businesses. Instead of being job seekers, they become job creators," he said. "It is almost the Alibaba of India on a more structured manner, having both physical and technical aspects. Here we have delivery points also. We now have 30,000 centres, catering to about 300 million people."

Sahaj, which is primarily present in East India, is now expanding to several states like Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu.

Talking of his business decisions, he can give an advice or two to state-run banks who are doing everything they can to bring Vijay Mallya back to India so that they can recover loans from him. Kanoria was one of the earliest lenders who were able to recover loans from the now defunct airline, having an additional, almost equal amount to spare.

It was in July 2012 that SREI bought ICICI Bank's entire outstanding exposure of Rs 450 crore in Kingfisher and shocked everyone. However, the deal was "ringfenced," as in, it was backed with shares of United Spirits, the liquor firm that Mallya owned.

SREI held on to the shares through its global fund arm India Global Competitive Fund, right to the point when share prices rocketed because of British liquor giant Diageo announcing plans to buy USL's stake. "I think it was April-May 2014, when there was an open offer. We didn't go for the open offer but sold our shares in the market," said Kanoria.


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